


Before

by tsthrace



Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24755545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsthrace/pseuds/tsthrace
Summary: "Raelle Collar.She let the name roll over her lips, feeling its story, a story like her own, all heartbreak and anger. Willa had told her Raelle would be broken, vulnerable. Ready."
Relationships: Raelle Collar/Scylla Ramshorn
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are just some jottings I made as I watched (and rewatched and rewatched) the first season. Though it all takes place before and during the pilot, this little piece is informed by all of who Scylla is revealed to be throughout the season.
> 
> It might grow into something longer, it might not. I'm just fascinated by Scylla, and I know I'm not the only one.

This was already going sideways. Raelle Collar did not look like her photo. No—that wasn’t quite it. She didn’t _feel_ like her photo. Scylla had heard everything Willa said. _Quiet. Fire. Potential._ It was all true, but not the whole truth. Scylla would be more precise in her report. _Endless depth. Pent-up storm. Unfocused fury._ She could feel it even from thirty yards away. 

She wanted to get closer. Maybe if she shape-shifted—but no, masking was like walking through a fog. She hadn’t quite mastered it yet, and burning back was hardly inconspicuous, especially in a place with so little privacy. Besides, her instructions had said _only when necessary_. It would be better, Willa had said, for her to be herself. 

But she wanted to get closer. She needed more information. No—she needed more feeling. It was important, she told herself, to understand that feeling. That expanding lightness in her chest. That warmth. That burning off of anger into...

Scylla caught herself smiling softly and shook her head sharply to throw it off. She clenched her jaw, internally berating herself. It was all wrong. No, she was getting jumbled, mixing up what was Raelle’s and what was hers. Worse, she had lost track of her anger, which meant she had lost track of herself. Without anger, there was no reason to be here. It was the kind of slip-up she couldn’t afford.

 _Raelle Collar_. She let the name roll over her lips, feeling its story, a story like her own, all heartbreak and anger. Willa had told her Raelle would be broken, vulnerable. Ready.

Raelle looked out in Scylla’s direction, as if she could feel her thoughts on her. Scylla was concealed amongst a dozen other necro cadets. She bent her head down, but kept her eyes on Raelle. She watched her pause for a moment before she turned away. Scylla’s eyes followed her across the courtyard and let her disappear into the refectory. It wasn’t time yet.

* * *

Scylla hated how beautiful Fort Salem was. The old, majestic trees, the ivy-covered buildings, the way the fog crept across the parade field early in the morning. Every corner was crisp and clean, every patch of ground tended with Fixer care, every room accented with wood that whispered warmth and tradition. She hated the sharp uniforms, the decent food, the dark and solemn assembly halls. But what she hated most were the reverent, self-important silences.

There was no liberty in lockstep, no freedom in storm and fury. This prison didn’t need bars. 

There was also no freedom in moving and hiding, moving and hiding, which had been the story of Scylla’s childhood thanks to forced conscription. The MPs always found them, but the dodger community kept them safe, moving and hiding. Her mother was a scryer, though her gifts only extended a few hours into the future. Her father had a gift for glamour. It had been enough. Until it wasn’t.

Her last memory of them was the sound of shattering.

Now she glowed with cold anger and a smile that was all bright, defiant mystery and no joy. 

She had been looking for The Spree when they found her—in a glamoured YouTube video whose message only a witch, and only an angry witch, would recognize. She followed a blue balloon to freedom.

She was a gift to them: the rare recruit who hadn’t already said or dodged the words. She trained in the basement of an auto factory, stacks of carburetors and exhaust pipes pushed to the dusty edges of the giant warehouse so that witches could learn to nurture and caress their powers, not restrain them. 

When she arrived at Fort Salem, she would be completely free.

* * *

The coin trap was a child’s spell. In high school, young witches used it to ingratiate themselves to the civilians, helping them to track their crush or providing an early warning system for when a teacher was coming. But there were no civilians here. So when Scylla set up a coin at the edge of her desk during resurrection interrogation training, her fellow cadets just smiled slyly at her. When it dropped and she slipped away, they just shook their heads. 

It was dusk, a golden time rife with power, but a certain kind of power. Beautiful and emerging, gathering and folding. Beltane started at dusk. Wars were settled at dusk. All the Bellweathers were were born at dusk, or so it was said.

Scylla remembers her mother telling her what time she was born, but now she couldn’t remember. She let the lack burn like a coal inside her.

She tracked Raelle as she left the green confines of the campus, walked through the trees, and emerged into a clearing, its scruffy grass glowing in the golden light. Her gait was deliberate, defiant, though her shoulders were hunched slightly, like she wanted to escape her sadness, but she couldn’t.

Scylla knew that feeling, but she had found her escape. She took a moment, hanging back at the tree line and composing herself. She’d had a little practice with civilians, leading them where she wanted them to go. She’d learned that she had a smile people wanted to follow. She’d learned when to use that. But witches’ eyes had a way of knowing a person—if they knew how to look. But Raelle was new, and she’d been living a civilian life. She probably knew the coin trick, but quieting herself enough to really look—that took training. More than the month’s worth she had so far. 

The air seemed to prick at Scylla’s skin, like electricity. She felt goosebumps jump against the lining of her jacket, felt danger dancing at the edge of her perception. 

She remembered the soft smile from the other day, the way she let her anger dissolve. She let herself linger there for a moment, caught herself, and shook her head sharply. _Keep it together, Ramshorn._

She heard a low rumbling, as if the earth was growling. It was coming from the west, from the direction of Raelle. Scylla stepped out from the treeline and drew in a quick breath. A tight line of tornadoes danced along the horizon no more than half a mile away, too close together and coordinated to be natural. Raelle’s silhouette was a small dark line against their dusty chaos. 

Scylla took a deep breath and stepped out from the tree line into the clearing. Her heart pounded as the power of it all washed over her. The golden light. The raging wind. This moment meant something.

It was time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter first appeared on tumblr awhile ago, but I thought I'd drop it here, too.

Scylla slammed the door behind her. Her chest was heaving up and down, up and down. It startled her, the way her heart was pounding, how breathless she felt. It had gone perfectly—more than perfectly. That smile Raelle had given her—that co-conspirator smile, that we-don’t-give-a-fuck smile, that we’re-in-this-together smile—it was natural. Getting caught hadn’t been in the plan, but it was a helpful touch. The upperclasswomen were so smug and demeaning. She and Raelle, together on the wrong side of a petty system.

Scylla shook her head. A full year at Fort Salem getting ready for this. A full year of tedious self-discipline and diminishing her skills. Control over flourish, steady over free. Spontaneity was drilled out of every soldier, even necros. She surrendered to the confinement, though every cell inside her screamed against it.

 _Know your enemy_ , Willa had said. _And don’t let them know you. Stay low, stay boring. Boring means invisible. Invisible means access._ And she was right. Scylla spent her first year as a skilled but unremarkably cadet. Always at the top of her class yet hardly anyone knew her name. Scylla wore unassuming well. When she wiped the mischief from her eyes, she was all bland sweetness. When she wandered off grounds to practice her death caps, no one paid any mind. She never went that far, and she always came back before the bell. When she was caught in the restricted section of combat herbs and potions storage, her drill sergeant had no reason not to believe that she’d gotten lost. 

She’d kept a quiet and clean slate that entire year so that she’d have demerits to give for her primary mission the following year. Demerits for the smart, harmless cadet who’d fall for a first-year. After all, new love made even boring witches do stupid things.

Willa was right. Scylla was finely tuned when Raelle finally arrived. She knew Fort Salem better than she’d ever known any place (it was the longest she’d ever stayed in one place). She knew its rhythms, and she knew that scryer eyes were everywhere. She knew the exact smile to flash as the tornadoes dissolved in that golden dusk, and the exact smile to give her drill sergeant when she reported back with demerits. 

Lieutenant Fernsby looked confused when Scylla handed her her medal. “This isn’t like you, Private.” 

Scylla smiled that shy smile, bit her lip, and looked down.

Fernsby followed Scylla’s bashfulness directly into the trap set. The drill sergeant flashed a knowing smile, happy to be in on the secret. “Happens to the best of us, Ramshorn. Just don’t make this a habit, okay?”

This is what she had been trained for. It felt so easy. 

But why was her chest heaving? Why was her heart pounding? She shook it off. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that this might be easy. Easier than she thought. 

\---

Scylla had been careful, pacing herself. Furtive glances across gatherings. Slight smiles in passing. Foraging for death and fungi in spaces she knew the first-years would pass by. Sometimes Raelle saw her, sometimes she didn’t. It didn’t matter. This was a long game. Raelle needed to know her, to want her, to trust her. 

When she finally made her move, it needed to be big. She carried government-issued big around in her pocket always, just in case. 

In truth, Scylla had only taken salva once. Necros weren’t combat-trained, at least not right away. They were too rare to be sent to the front lines where their unique gifts would be wasted. They usually arrived after the battle, reading the carnage, harvesting the shadow of life left behind in blood spilled, in cries still lingering in the air. The Army wasted nothing, not even death. Necros were both alchemists and oracles. They turned devastation into information. Coming up from behind, they knew the future.

While regular cadets spent their first full year in intensive combat training, necros only learned the basics until they received their permanent assignment. Combat 101 was mostly a joke in the necro class. They learned scourge basics and general weaponized vocalizations, which for them were blunt and harsh. The seed sounds necros learned were mostly delicate, intricate, and subtle—except for the resurrection sounds that only worked at Beltane. Summoning a spirit back to its corpse required the deep and guttural sounds of the hot life that flowed in the deep layers of the earth. It took years to master those rhythms and registers.

Necros formed the core of Army intelligence. They were natural spies. Spies didn’t do combat drops. Spies didn’t need salva. 

So Scylla’s salva use had been limited to one class her first year, one leg tied to the ground as the salva lifted her into the air. _Salva can be very dangerous if misused_ , Lieutenant Grieg said sternly. Her face betrayed a hidden kindness, but Scylla could tell that she wasn’t comfortable around necros. They practiced weightless body control and setting themselves back on the ground. Nothing like the regular cadet training—necros were too rare to risk unnecessary injury. 

What Scylla remembered was the flood of fearlessness, how she was filled with nothing and everything at the same time, how she could feel each hair on her head to its very tip. She wandered through a place where her anger disappeared without her even noticing, the lightness overcoming her most bitter despair. She hovered there, ignoring Grieg as she shouted instructions, refusing to come down. She fell four feet when the salva wore off, twisting her ankle. It was the only assignment she failed.

The rain told Scylla that today was the day. Its scent of slate and soil were the only omens she needed. Rain meant that drill sergeants would have the first-years out on the course. It meant that Izadora would send the necro cadets into the forest: rain had a way of bringing freshly dead things to the surface. Scylla just needed to be scavenging in the right place at the right time.

She set up the ropes under a sprawling oak—the only thing she loved at Fort Salem. The oak was a kindred spirit: deep roots, dark hope, and slow-burning anger. It was beautiful and ominous. There was power under that oak. Courage came easy under that oak.

Scylla set herself up a few minutes’ walk away from the tree at the edge of a clearing. Then she waited, picking through the layer of decomposing leaves into the soft ground. There was more life than death: worms gliding, beetles scampering, centipedes dashing back into the darkness. She was practicing the simple seed sounds of uncovering when a wave of exhaustion rolled through her, invading her limbs. She steadied her breath and looked up. Raelle was stumbling beside Tally and Abigail as they made their way back to the barracks from the course. They were all hunched over and covered in mud.

Scylla squinted. It wasn’t just exhaustion she felt—there was also pride. She bit her lip and looked intently in Raelle’s direction. A smile washed over her. Raelle was already walking towards her.

 _Careful_. Willa’s voice drifted through Scylla’s thoughts. _Go slow. We need her._

Raelle followed her more than willingly to the oak. Her smile curved with curiosity. (Raelle’s was a smile that was always more joyful than she realized or intended. It was the kind of smile that remade the world. Scylla felt this in her bones, but she wouldn’t let herself see how it remade her until it was too late. Until after everything.) Scylla was a little startled by how eager she was to pull the salva out of her pocket, to get it into her bloodstream, to return to that lightness.

 _Remember, this isn’t about you,_ Willa invaded. But it was too late. The star had dissolved into her skin, its substance pulsing through her. She couldn’t help but smile. It wasn’t a smile to lure, it was a smile for herself. To keep. Or to give. Everything dissolved except the air that held her and the joy that kept her alive (though she didn’t know it). She was pure fearlessness, which meant she was completely herself.

Raelle saw that smile and clearly needed no more convincing. She pushed the star onto her skin. Her eyes glowed like the sun reflecting off the ocean.

The air held them, drawing them up and into itself. Their smiles were pure light pouring through their bodies like an electric current connecting every cell. They reached for each other, not in need but in shared astonishment that everything was the way it was supposed to be. In that moment, they each had everything they would ever need. 

Until it all fell down. 

**Author's Note:**

> I love Scylla and am so fascinated by her motivations and blindspots. I love dropping into her mind, but it takes a lot out of me. I write when I get into a Scylla mood, which is to say I write when I'm ready to confront her darkness.
> 
> Anyhow, leave me some kudos if you enjoyed this! Drop me a comment if you have thoughts!
> 
> I've only written one other Motherland fic, [Hail Beltane](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24493606), where Raelle finds who she's supposed to find at Beltane. Check it out if you're interested.
> 
> You can find me @tsthrace on tumblr.


End file.
